It's the end of the world as you know it – brought to you by a Gnome Mage with big balls of fire

Cross Server Summoning Stone

Cross server LFG is on it’s way to us, soon if I remember right, and Presby comment from the other day got me wondering.

As things stand at the moment:

Instances and summoning stones

Right now our LFG PuG options are limited to our own realm. You can enter LFG from anywhere in the world for instances that are considered level appropriate (one of my bugbears, but I’ll let it go for now).

Once you group is formed you all head to the instance, well at least two of you do, and use the summoning stone located nearby.

Battlegrounds

Likewise with Battlegrounds you can queue from anywhere in the world (except within a BG… which annoys me a little.. you know there are 2 minutes left in your BG, why can’t you queue for the next one?)

The difference is that once the Battleground is full, you get ported directly inside the BG to the starting area. No messing about or traveling to Alterac Mountains, Arathi Highlands or Ashenvale (Mmm… triple A rated BGs!)

Pros and Cons.

Instances

What a pain it is when you get the group formed but no one is close to the stone. Worse yet, there is one or more people near the stone, but they’re the ones that are AFK.

At least if you only have one bag slot left and a durability of 10% you can drop by the bank, vendor, AH before you accept the summons. Maybe drop by the nearby quest giver and collect the quests.

Battlegrounds

I remember the good old days (cough cough) when you had to queue at the entrance to the BG… Assuming you weren’t ganked on your way in, or out. Zupa gave us a reminder of these days with the video that inspired him to roll a Mage.

So, no seriously they weren’t that good, though there some upsides. One of those was that if you had to enter through the BG door, you had to pass by the quest givers.

Even better was that 2 minute period where you get kicked from the BG could be used to make your way out through the entrance, or even to the quest givers inside AV.

While I don’t miss those days that much, I do miss the flexibility of exit.

What will the future hold?

Battlegrounds

Well we already have cross faction BGs, so nothing is going to change there is it?

Well I guess I hope it does.

I would like to be able to exit through the front doors and visit the quest givers again. It’s a pain being sucked from Outland to AV, then having to weave your way back to Alterac Valley to hand in the quests.

Likewise I would like it if you could queue for battlegrounds in the last couple of minutes. Maybe put it on a limited timer so if no BG pops within 2 minutes you have to re-queue.

Instances

Bugbear rears it’s ugly head.

Sometimes I get nostalgic.

Sometimes Blizzard forces me to be nostalgic.

LFG BRD or Slave Pens for a Holiday event?

Join the /lfg chat channel and beg, because you can’t use the LFG interface.

I can’t imagine that Blizzard will make the chat channel cross server… that’s a sure path to insanity.

So hopefully the modify the LFG interface to be more like the calendar drop down that includes everything and it’s dog.

Summoning Stones

This is going to be a doozy. Potentially the 5 member of your group will be from 5 different servers, so how are you going to get 2 people to a summoning stone?

Likewise you won’t be meeting outside the instance, so will Blizzard allow us to exit through the front door and visit the vendors and quest givers.

Maybe we will get a new interface option. One that removes the need to visit the summoning stone. Maybe we will get an instance drop down with the option to summon to the instance, or at least port to the instance (sounds a bit ghetto hearthy though)

Chaining Instances

Sure there is the chance you will join the PuG from hell, but believe it or not, you are more likely to get the PuG of joy… well, they will be good enough anyway.

These days if you like your group it’s quite common to chain instance runs. They are short enough, particularly in Northrend, that you can run 3 or 4 in the time it takes to run Vanilla instances.

So what do you do?
Rejoin LFG for a different instance keeping your group?
Select a different (new) instance interface option to get ported to a new instance?
What?
How?

Vendor time

Hopefully the LFG instance entry option isn’t like BGs. While it’s handy to be plucked out of anywhere Nd deposited back there when you are finished, things are slightly different with instances.

One of the good things about the BG LFG is that you can go do stuff. You need to go do stuff because it can be 1/2 hour between battles, especially now that the BG won’t start until the group is full.

LFG is, currently at least, worse. You can spend a whole night sitting in LFG. So what do you do?

You do something, anything while you wait. You grind, you quest, you BG. Whatever you are doing has a cost.

Equipment durability

Consumables

Bag space

However Blizzard implements the cross server LFG, hopefully it will allow us to port home 1st and clean ourselves up before we meet our new friends.

Loot redistribution

Depending on whether you have been ninja’d or the beneficiary of the new 2 hour boss loot trade window, things are going to become a lot more complicated soon.

Someone doesn’t follow loot rules (intentionally or not)

You want to give that drop to the nice guy from that other server

How will this loot recovery/redistribution be handled in future, when it is highly likely you will never see the other players again?

Cross Faction Calendars

If we can “randomly” queue for and join parties, why ant we be more proactive?

You find that PuG of joy (don’t laugh, it happens), you have even managed to chain some instances together on one night.

Will we be allowed to proactively invite people from other servers. Rather than signing up for your realm’s Friday night guild run, why not sign up your new mates…

New mates, or maybe they are old mates. I dare say that most of us have old friends that play on other servers in your Battlegroup. Maybe they (or you) did a realm transfer but you still want to catch up with them occasionally.

Being able to plan your cross server instance runs seems to me to be a great feature… I guess we could all just join LFG at the appointed time, but I’d like a cleaner solution.

Mana biscuits

I love making Mage food.

I love consuming Mage food.

I don’t like losing it after a cross faction BG.

I actually thought it used to carry over, out of the BG and back to your realm for future use. I noticed my health stone (generously donated by a nice lock… See they aren’t all evil!), came with me out of the BG, but my Mage water didn’t…

Doesn’t blizzard know how hard it is to squeeze water from a Mage? (blood = easy, water = hard).

So yeah Blizzard, let us keep our conjured consumables both in BGs and Instances.

What else can go wrong right?

Have you guys thought much about this?
What do you think we need to make this workable?

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6 Responses

After the implementation of cross-server LFG / instance runs, accountability is going to go out the window. At the moment, if you mess up bad, ninja loot, abuse people or otherwise act like a tool in a PuG, you will get remembered. You will get ignored, you will get added to (not)friends lists so people can avoid you in future. Will you be able to add people from other servers to your friends / ignore lists?

With no accountability, comes extra asshattery. It’s like a fundamental law or something along the lines of internet + annonymity = douchebag. In my recent experience I would guestimate about 1 in 6 or so people I pug with are horrible. So most of the time its fine, and when it isnt usually it’s something you can quickly resolve. Will it become that much harder to find and hang onto a PuG of joy with cross server LFG? I think so.

… But there’s more content out there to be pugging aside from just 5 mans. What happens when you pug Ulduar and it all falls apart? How many people are going to try to steal that raid ID and finish it off in different groups? How does that get handled? What happens if someone extends the raid ID of a pugged raid, do the other people find themselves stuck with it next week?

Thinking about pugging raids, how can you easily verify people have the required gear to join your raid if they come from another server? Cross server gear /talent inspections? I don’t think that’s going to happen.

In fact, I expect people will avoid pugging players from other servers whenever possible. I would sooner spam trade and general to pick up the players I need for a PuG than go outside my own server.

Personally i think the new LFG system will be helping lowbies only, or even people who just hit 80 and want to gear up.

Otherwise, i feel that it will fail like all the ”cool idea blizz” things.

When you talked about the old LFG system, i remembered the real old days when you had to go to the summoning stone (wasnt a summoning stone back then, it was there to say that there is an instance here) and click on it, to get queued to that particular instance LFG system. it was messed up.

What really pisses me off, is the Enchanter thing that they will be adding, there will be a greed/need/disenchant thing in the new rolling system, as an enchanter my self, i dont like to ask people to pass on blues to D/E them, i roll greed like anyone else and if i wont it i keep it then D/E it myself to get mats for me.
If anyone asked for it, i will be glad to do it, i just dont want to do it because i have to!

I really hate how Blizz is going with this, and i hope they only do it for lowbies, there will be a massive ninja looting happening and i just hate the idea.

If they really implement it, i won’t use it anymore, Arthas-US is a big server, staying in a major city for 15 minutes will get me in a raid.